Cheeky snap wins award
A cheeky gamble with something fruity paid off for UCOL photographer Jack Mckenzie.
Mckenzie, 56, won student photographer of the year at the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography Iris Awards this month with his two entries, Fruity As and Lake Taupo II.
The Lake Taupo shot is one of mist descending on the still lake, with a buoy to one side, but the gold-medal-winning picture was someone’s bare backside, resembling a peach.
Mckenzie admitted the photo was of someone’s buttocks, but would not say who they belonged to. He drew inspiration from a German painter and had been experimenting with squares, but realised he had to go with curves.
‘‘I’d been shooting sports stuff, which did all right. Last year, I had the best image I’d ever had. I thought I’m never going to do better than that at NZIPP, I’ll have to do something different.
‘‘I was quite happy to bomb out or do well. You have to take a chance.’’
Mckenzie, who is also an Ironman competitor, had been taking photos for a few years with a basic camera, then started studying photography and design at UCOL in 2014.
He was taking mainly sports photos, but found it was a hard field to break into and he drifted more into arty photography, which he found more fun.
‘‘I thought I was going to do it for one year. It was something I wanted to get out of my system.’’
When Stuff called this week he was snapping birds on the Manawatu¯ Estuary.
A website designer, he was working to sustain his photography work, but now is spending about three-quarters of his time with photography and study, and the rest working.
It was a big honour for Mckenzie to win the award and bring it back to UCOL, he said.
UCOL had won the student-of-the-year award for 13 straight years until last year.
UCOL lecturers Ian Rotherham, Toni Larsen, Tricia Falkner and Gerry Le Roux also did well in their categories.
Larsen won four bronze awards and one silver award, Rotherham was a finalist in the book category for his book 100 Portraits: A Portrait a Week Project, Falkner won three bronzes and one silver, and Le Roux won one silver with distinction and three bronzes.